Happy Trails: Our Life Story

If the word Trigger makes you dream of a golden palomino, you're old enough to have grown up idolizing the King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers — and to feel bamboozled when you find out he was an Ohio native named Leonard Slye who never ventured west until he was 18. You'll flinch at the monstrous news that sidekick Gabby Hayes was no old Pecos codger but a sophisticated Shakespearean thespian who drove a black Continental convertible! Yet at least Trigger was a real horse, and if you still believe (as I do) that life's purpose is to be like Roy, you'll find some of the rambling anecdotes in Happy Trails: Our Life Story surprisingly moving. Wife Dale works self-pityingly hard at making doggone sure we know how much she's suffered, but the hearts of real fans will break when Roy tells of Trigger's death at 33: He ''passed so gently that he hadn't even kicked up dirt.'' Happy trails, pardner. B